[This is the second in a series of 3 articles. See previous article here.]

After more than 6 hours of learning, playing and testing on various devices, I’ve come to a decision about Opera 9.5. Beta. It’s technically a great browser with a very good user interface. Unfortunately though, there’s a core problem out there that’s out of Opera’s hands. Hardware. Opera does a good job but limited processing power and small screen sizes and resolutions hold it back from presenting a full Internet experience.

In this review (video below) I’ll be looking at Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta on the iPaq 214 (see previous article for information on the iPaq 214) from a mobile computing perspective. I’ll be comparing the browser to what I’ve seen on MIDs and on Ultra Mobile PCs. In effect, I’m comparing it to the desktop. Not fair you say? I think it is. Mobile devices are now capable of running desktop software and full desktop browsers at impressive speeds. For many, the slower, although cheaper, mobile Internet experience offered by many consumer devices is probably good enough but if you rely on your browser for more than just browsing, you’ll want the fastest and most accurate mobile browsing platform you can find. In the near future, consumers are going to be more demanding of their mobile browsers too. Unfortunately, as I write this, there are very few Windows Mobile devices out there that have the screen-size and processing throughput, from network to rendering, that are able to offer users the chance to experience modern web pages, AJAX applications and to come anywhere near to a desktop-standard browsing speed. Opera 9.5 doesn’t appear to be any more efficient than it’s predecessor either. It has some other issues too issues which i’ll highlight here but please note that this is Beta software. While we are unlikely to see any more features (apart from the ones listed as disabled in the beta here), there could still be bug fixes and optimizations to sort out.

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If you have a Windows Mobile device and have any interest in a better Internet browsing experience, you should check this out. If your device has flash lite support (v3 I think is needed here) then you shuld be able to watch in-line flash videos. If not, you wont get that support.

Phone Arena have a hands-on and video.

even with our old HTC Wizard with TI processor at 200 MHz and modified WM6.1 OS, browsing a page is a pleasure, compared to doing it with IE

I’m sure there’s be lots of hands-on reports over the next week. I’ll be doing mine as soon as the iPaq 214 turns up. Expected tomorrow. (Unless I can steal my wife’s WM device!)

Download via this link

Via GottabeMobile

The software that could resurrect Windows Mobile devices as acceptable Internet browsing tools is delayed. Or at least the beta is delayed.

Apparently there’s a few bugs they want to iron out before they release the s/w so you won’t be able to download it until Thursday. Its OK by me as the 624Mhz, 4" VGA iPaq 214 that I was going to borrow to test it out hasn’t turned up yet.

Via The Unwired.

Firefox is my recommendation for any device running a ‘low-end’ platform due to its speed and reduced memory footprint and I encourage everyone reading this website to make sure they test out the release candidate ASAP and download the final  version when its  available. If the fact that it’s fast isn’t enough for you, how about being a part of a world record attempt?

Mozilla wants as many people as possible to try and download it in the first 24 hours of it being available.

Via The Register, who point out that there is no current record holder for this new category.  Hmmmm!

Most, if not all of you reading this will have heard of the Firefox browser and many of you will have tried Firefox 3.0 beta. I held back from using it for a long time because it was beta software but the latest release candidate seems stable and has me converted on all platforms now. Firefox 3.0 is fast. Firefox 3.0 is memory efficient. Firefox 3.0 has great features and overall its a clear winner on ultra mobile PC and netbook platforms, especially when using online applications.

Like Safari, it appears from my test results that Firefox 3.0 can process java-heavy pages on a Ghz-class ultra mobile PC faster than the data arrives over my 6mbps Internet connection which means that for rich Internet applications, the bottleneck is at the remote server and there’s very little else you can do to speed up the experience. Apparently, java processing in FF3 is many many times faster than in version 2 so this explains the big improvement with online applications. Not only is the speed improved but there are some great features that will appeal to ultra mobile PC users too. But first, here’s some test results. I took 5 devices and ran speed tests on 3 browsers [*1] using reader.google.com as the target page. It’s a java-heavy page and there’s no flash or major numbers of images to process but its typically my slowest-loading browser application. It represents a typical online application and for web-workers, its a good, tough benchmark.

More info after the jump…

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I just blogged that 88% of my mobile device usage is with a browser. I dare say that if I had a device that was fast enough, had a good enough touchscreen and offered a real, http-based client browser then i’d be happy. Indeed, my own ideal device specifications from Feb 2006 run along those lines with the definition being open to any processing platform as long as it delivers a quality Internet experience.

This is the reason that I’m very interested in seeing how good Opera Mobile 9.5 is on the ARM Smartphone platforms. If it’s good enough its going to elevate big-screen smartphones into devices that I’d consider alongside an Intel MID. Take the iPaq 210/214 for example. Its only got a VGA touchscreen and no 3G but with Opera Mobile 9.5 it really could satisfy a lot of peoples mobile Internet requirements for a Nokia N810-beating price.

Matt Miller of ‘The Mobile Gadgeteer’ says Opera 9.5 is the ‘Best mobile browser I’ve ever used.’ and that it ‘provides more functionality than the rather revolutionary Apple iPhone browser.’ I say that this browser will make many people think twice about buying a MID because it not only looks and reacts well but its got some very nice advanced features. But there are clearly limitations. Google Docs didn’t work in Matts test which, although you may not use Google docs, should be a concern if you depend on complex sites like Meebo, iGoogle, Facebook etc. Flash-Lite is included which is good but how are other media types presented and supported? How fast can it render the full-fat Google Reader webpage? I know it takes a low-power PC about 15 seconds to render my Google Reader page. Any smartphone on the market today is going to have trouble doing that in under 25 seconds.

[Video after the break…]

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Opera Mini usage overtook use of the slow S60 browser on my N82 a long time ago due to its easy to use features and the way it renders pages but mostly, because of it’s speed. It uses a man-in-the-middle server to provide cached and optimised versions of pages that are transmitted using proprietary technology, not HTTP, to the client. Its not perfect but it works well for the average ‘browsing’ session. Version 4.1 has just been released and it brings a feature that I was missing from the S60 browser – URL history. It’s also a little faster although not that you’d really notice it in general use. I’d love to have a version of this for Windows so that I could run it on a ultra mobile PC if data usage was tight (when roaming for example) or when I’m in a fringe area and down to GPRS speeds but alas, its not available. Why don’t they build that feature into Opera desktop? It would be great to switch into proxied mode when needed.

jkOnTheRun have a list of the other new features which include web page saving (again, something I was using on the S60 browser) and more. If you want to upgrade your phone, point it to http://www.operamini.com/